Sustainable? Some of RI’s Corporate Welfare is Funded by Moral Obligation Bonds!

Brian Bishop points out in today’s GoLocalProv that certain corporate welfare handed out by the state is funded not pay-as-you-go, out of the budget, but by moral obligation bonds.

Even if you think historic tax breaks are a necessary evil, we didn’t budget for the cost of these breaks, we used moral obligation bonds through the Commerce Corporation to pay for them, a harbinger of the tax [breaks] and spend ‘fireworks’ economy. The flash and bang from each growth purchase fades quickly, requiring us to head back to the fireworks factory and buy more and more, when we haven’t even paid for the fireworks that have already gone off and faded.

The corporate welfare in the form of crony-targeted tax breaks that Governor Raimondo, with the approval of the General Assembly, hands out are bad enough. But the state also hands out corporate welfare for which taxpayers must pay interest! (Remember, this was also the funding method of the 38 Studios debacle.)

The cool new thing with progressive politicians is “sustainable”, as in “sustainable development” and “sustainable energy”. But how can (re)development funded at someone else’s (taxpayers) expense via high-interest moral obligation bonds be cast as “sustainable”?

In fact, what state and local taxpayers really need first and foremost is sustainable budgeting! And further to that, we need elected officials in the Rhode Island Executive and Legislative branches who recognize these (corporate welfare and, even worse, corporate welfare charged to someone else’s high interest credit card) for the unsustainable policies that they are and put an end to them.